Before we left for our Michigan trip, we decided we needed a decent, working radio. Like many high-end German cars of this era, our car came with a Becker Europa radio. These radios were not yet in stereo when ours was made. They became available a few years later, and those radios are still available today.
To learn more about old German audio, we visited Becker Autosound in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. These former employees of Becker took over the classic car part of the company in the United States when the brand decided to leave our shores a few years ago.
Becker Autosound repairs, restores and sells all manner of Beckers, related radios and accessories. We showed them what we had.
They suggested that if we wanted a period look and really good quality sound, we should use a stereo version of the Europa radio. We could even keep our original faceplate, as the early Becker stereo radios kept the same odd size that our 1966 Mercedes used. They also provided us with an iPod jack and showed us how to wire the radio to a modern amp. We hid the amp under the dash.
From there, we used their tiny speakers that mount in the kick panels and we mounted some fairly subtle 5.5-inch speakers in the rear deck.
We were positively shocked with how good the radio now sounded in our classic Mercedes. We were quite pleased that the investment for everything needed was under $1000, as we were able to trade our Becker mono Europa in on the deal.
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Update by Tim Suddard to the
